What was your worst Cryptocurrency mining investment ?

[adaseb]

When I started mining back in late 2013, a buddy of mine introduced me to Litecoin mining. He said an 270X can make $5/day.

At first I didn't believe him but after him showing me his statements for a couple weeks I decided that it seemed like a good idea.

At first I had trouble finding GPUs, but eventually found some R9 270X at a local microcenter retailer, the price was I think $260 CAD each.

So it was great for like 1 week. And then all hell broke lose when MtGox scammed everybody, China declared Bitcoin illegal, and Litecoin ASICs hit the market.

I ended up selling those GPUs like a year later for only $100. It wasn't a huge loss monetary but it was a huge waste of time.

Should of kept them for ETH mining but GPU mining at the end of 2014 seems like a complete waste and the GPUs would be better off sold to some gamers.


My best investment was probably the 2nd hand S3 I bought for $50 and used for over a year and made almost $400 profit, and ended up selling that miner itself for $100.

What's your story?

[QuintLeo]

Worst was the first Griidseed 80 blade I bought - at appx. $1600 - about 3 WEEKS before they dropped to under $1000. Never did manage ROI on that thing, though the other 2 I ended up with did manage it eventually and I did make back a fairly sizeable chunk of what I paid for that one before it died.

 I'm pretty sure I ended up even or better on everything else I've mined with, except perhaps the 7870 and 7850 AMD GPUs - and those got used for other stuff after they became unprofitable on Litecoin (unfortunately, both have also died since, or I'd be using them on Ethereum). I'm SURE I managed to pay off all of my 7750s via Litecoin mining, though one of those has died since (bloody HIS doesn't believe in GOOD fans on their cards, WAY too many issues with them to the point I'll never buy another one again - and I notice Newegg has DROPPED them).

 Funny part - the oldest GPU I bought and used on mining (Sapphire 7750 low profile) is STILL running strong with ZERO issues, currently crunching RC5 since it doesn't have enough RAM for Ethereum and my electric is too high for X11 to be break-even (I might get to reconsider that after my planned move this summer).



 The book is still out on my A2 Terminator units, they're not at break-even yet but they're still quite profitable even at CURRENT electric rate, and should be profitable after I move even if difficulty goes up a LOT after the A4 starts shipping.

[merelcoin]

I once bought a couple of gridseed gc3355's from aliexpress (don't know, about 6-8 months ago i think)... They were dirt cheap, and i didn't do my homework before i bought them.
They arrived, their PSU's were incorrect (the "exploded" when i started mining, apparently, their ameperage was totally wrong), the cables didn't fit... In the end, i just got rid of most of them, kept one, it mined for a couple of weeks untill i decided it didn't have enough hashrate to produce enough coins to keep it running. Now it's just gathering dust on my window still.

[toptek]

a Alcheminer 256 I  bought with a bad controller i have it working half ass now with a PI but need a better guide on how to then what i found so i can run it just off a PI with all the Blades so far all the blades seems ok .  just need either the controller fixed or a new one or a more refined guide on how to off a PI, I 'm not that great writing code but do understand it and how to read how to's .so i keep looking and hope some one posts a nice one one day .


@ QuintLeo

I wish i had bought a A 2 now over the Alcheminer 256  at least the A2 I could have bought all the parts worked for the same price i paid for the 256  greed got the best of me on that deal i was greedily i wanted the extra speed . so i basically screwed my self and that was the worst thing I bought so far or did unless i get it working right one day .

[benjamoyne]

Doing a pre order for the Fibonacci scrypt miners from Jason Hudgins aka Jasin Lee.

$2000 dollars later, no miner.
A couple of guys sued him, but thats still apparently ongoing.

Lesson learned. No pre orders ever!!

[heslo]

BlackArrow Prospero X1.... that piece of crap was so so late then I had to deal with the con artist Matt Carson at the now defunct MinerSource. I was one of the lucky ones that eventually got their hardware although it was pretty much useless by the time it arrived

[sidehack]

I also bought a couple X1 off MinerSource. Carson did a fair bit of business with me buying PSU boards and cables, so I bought miners from him in return when he had something I wanted. About February 2014 I paid down on a couple X1, about $800 total. Around July Technobit started talking about their quad Minion boards, and Carson told me they were getting about half a dozen sample boards by the end of the month and asked if I wanted to trade my X1 orders straight across for two of those boards. He figured I could test the heck out of 'em and put up some info. So I agreed. And then Technobit apparently never shipped his boards, or he lied to me about receiving them, because I never got 'em. Two of my hosting customers had paid for 40 boards between 'em on the MinerSouce group buy and never received 'em, and so did a couple other folks I know, so it's possible. Well anyways a couple months later Carson asked me if I wanted to buy some of his HEX4M boards when he got 'em since he was supposed to be getting in a bunch, and I casually reminded him that he owed me a pair already. The subject was immediately dropped.

A couple months later, early 2015, Carson came to me asking about building around a thousand soldered-cable Dell 750W PSUs for someone he was working with. The price Novak and I came up with was a lot better than who he currently had doing it, apparently, and it helped that we could make the cables in-house. So we got everything lined up, and I started bringing in materials - bulk rolls of heat-shrink, a couple fresh spools of wire. I had been saving up for a hosting expansion, so I dipped into that fund to buy the materials because the big job would have paid out enough to do the whole expansion. And then I asked him if we could get that $800 from a year ago squared up either as a refund or the pair of Martominions I was promised. Apparently he didn't like me bringing it up, because he never responded and I never heard from him again. And I was left with three spools of heatshrink tube, twenty thousand feet more wire than I needed, and not enough money to do the hosting expansion. But of course I'd already promised my customers the reduced rates I planned to deliver once I was shifted into a better rate bracket by my electric provider, which took hosting from paying the entire rent on my building (which we only leased because hosting would cover that cost, it was too high to foot just out of regular sales) to pretty much just breaking even on its own power costs. Finally got the expansion completed and the new power running in January of this year, after scraping bottom for about eleven months straight.

So, my worst investment is twofold. In the first, I bought a couple X1 from Minersource. In the second, I took a job from Matt Carson (who had hosed me once or twice as an individual, but not as a business) and assumed he'd follow through with it, the fruits of that decision being a financial hit cumulatively twenty times as costly as the X1 purchase.

There was one other time when I had two big customers (Minersource and one individual setting up a farm) bought up pretty much my entire stock of 750W and DPS2K boards, PSUs and cables at about the same time, and then both were about a month late paying invoices. So we had $14K worth of stuff built, packed, palletized and waiting to ship, and got down to about $10 in the bank before one of them finally paid up. That's not really an investment so much as a mining-adjacent "man I hate people who wait freakin' forever to pay invoices" that still hurt quite a bit.

[heslo]

Yeah, Carson is a piece of work... only hope karma one day catches up to the dropkick

[NotFuzzyWarm]

The AMT/Bitmine.ch A1 miner fiasco.  http://web.archive.org/web/20140501002030/http://advancedminers.com/bitcoin-mining-hardware/520-ghs-bitcoin-miner/
I got sucked into that because their 512GHs miner had been advertised as 'available in 4 weeks' vs the THs rigs which were pre-order only. We all know how that went: On AMT's end, dozens or more customers out 10's of k$ each from pre-order sales of the THs rigs, very few customers eventually getting anything at all many many month over due. Only the courts know how many direct Bitmine.ch customers were scammed over their A1 Coincraft rigs.

I was one of the lucky few who got anything from AMT, a Dragon clone I think built by LKtek and it arrived 8 month late. At least was a solid 1.1THs rig but still, $4k for it when the S2's had been out for a couple months and the S3's were just coming out... Ran it non-stop  with zero problems until 3 weeks ago when I finally shut it down to free up its 1.5kw to replace with a s7.

[suchmoon]

My worst was Gridseed 300 KH/s Scrypt miners. Lost probably $10k or so.

As the OP I started with GPUs in 2013 but I did make some modest profits by moving through different algos. Scrypt, X11, Decred, ETH.

But the best by far was the assortment of Bitcoin miners in the period between mid-2014 and mid-2015. Every single one made money and then some.

Lost some $8k on the initial batches of S7 but I was already mostly out of mining by that time. I think the lesson with Gridseeds helped to avoid sinking more money in. This could have been $80k easily instead of $8k. Still running a few as a hobby since I have infrastructure in place and a lease until June so might as well use it.

[dogie]

Worst was likely B3 Avalon preorders. One was a scam, one devalued to maybe <40% and same with an additional module and some group shares.

[Jaz80]

Worst was bfl and some scam cloud mining(gawminer, ltcgear) Lost about $60K. Lesson learned never invest in cloud mining or pre orders.

[SFR10]

Were almost the same in terms of involved equipment. I purchased 3 r9 270x (sapphire) back then and was hoping to to mine using multiple GPU's and get good profit and use it into repurchasing further GPU's but just after only a week, one of them gave up on me and never hashed anymore so as result I end up with no ROI and had to resell the other 2 GPU's for a cut price, just after a week due to having fear of getting same outcome.

[mavericklm]

''few'' s7 recently bought just when bitmain cannibalized the market!

[philipma1957]

These ice fury sticks delayed for delivery and the U1's came out at ½ the price. While waiting for a 2300 usd order.

What saved me was buying 150 u1's at a good price and selling them on ebay really fast.

I kept these and mined them  still lost at least ½ the 2300 paid for them.

Must have been delayed more then 100 days.



https://i.imgur.com/4tXzWLL.png

[DrG]

BFL SC Single

Distant second was Avalon B3 scam that dogie noted above.

[philipma1957]

my second worst was gridseed blades.

First was at 800  had as many as 17 of them.

but they just dropped in price as did ltc.

I may have done worse with these then the icefury usb sticks not sure.

[HerbPean]

Buying 2 S7 Batch 1 in BTC but that easy to say when the coins are now at 465$. I couldn't afford the cash investment at that time.

I'm sure they will ROI someday ;-) (Especially here where our electricity is cheap and adding the resell value)

[Rabinovitch]

S7 batch 6 and batch 8 were my worst investment about 5 monthes ago. I bought it for about $1750 (B6) and $1660 (B8), guess the price I can now sell it for? Yep, 550-560 USD maximum...